This vilifying of cities, and the project of convincing rural and suburban voters that the Democrats who run those cities are handing out fentanyl and destroying America, appears to be working, at least for Republican voters in red states.
Yes, I think one can legitimately criticize Maher here. I think this discussion got sidetracked by arguments about the exact words that Maher used to describe the SF shoplifting problem. In retrospect, though, he’s making unwarranted implications about the causes.
It’s not that he’s wrong about the high shoplifting rate in SF (or general crime rate, or the drug use, etc.). He’s not wrong about that. It’s not about the wording that he used to describe it. It’s perfectly clear what he meant.
The problem is the “loony left” theory of why SF is having these problems. SF (and LA, the #1 city for shiplifting) have Democratic administrations, as of course does the state of California. Does this explain everything? Maher seems to think that when liberal policies become too extreme, it does. I think some of the decisions made by these administrations may be contributing factors, but to blame excessively liberal governance for everything is, at best, far too simplistic. There are cities all over the world with progressive administrations located in progressive national and regional jurisdictions that don’t have these problems, so there are clearly other contributing factors. If SF and LA have crappy mayors that aren’t adequately enforcing the law or enacting other measures to mitigate crime, that isn’t a “liberal” problem.
I agree with Maher that there are loony extremists on the far left. I agree that SF and LA have big crime problems. In retrospect, however, I think it’s irresponsible to claim that the former automatically explains the latter.